Clause 8 - Tests for registration:
Hunting Bill
3:00 pm
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman is raising an interesting point and he is right. We are advocating suitable species management using dogs, as a result of which the species would be improved by small degrees. The notion that that would somehow result in a huge improvement in the species with super-foxes that are extra good at catching chickens is absurd.
More interesting is the fact that the hon. Gentleman seems to be saying, as did his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West this morning, that whether foxes are young, old, healthy, disabled, injured or whatever, they all deserve equally to be kept alive or to be killed. Surely there is an argument that there is a good reason for taking out foxes that are less healthy.